Why obesity before 50 spells cancer

A 2017 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine took a broad, long-term look at what the obesity epidemic is costing us.

Entitled, “Health Effects of Overweight and Obesity in 195 Countries Over 25 Years,” the following concluding statement stopped me in my tracks:

“…excess body weight accounted for about 4 million deaths and 120 million disability-adjusted life years worldwide in 2015.”

Millions of lives lost, and millions of years of healthy, vital living missed because we carry too much weight.

The Centers for Disease Control define obesity as a Body Mass Index (BMI) over 30. BMI is just the ratio of your height to your weight.

Being obese is linked to heart disease and stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, asthma and gout.

Oh, and cancer.

The link between weight and cancer

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, being overweight or obese is associated with a higher risk of more than a dozen cancers. The common factor is the low-level but persistent inflammation caused by excess weight.

For example, fatty tissue produces excess estrogen, and high levels of estrogen are associated with the risk of breast cancer.

Obese people also will often have elevated insulin levels, which promotes kidney cancer.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the fastest killers of all. With good treatment, a person can survive as long as a year after diagnosis but is often gone within months. My friend Scott was a fighter; he held on for almost three years.

I recently talked to you about the risk factors you can control when it comes to this killer. Your weight is one of these.

Related: Pamper your pancreas to lose weight

On the other hand, age is one of those risk factors you can’t control. Your risk of developing pancreatic cancer increases as you get older. Most people who develop it are older than 45, with 90% being older than 55 and 70% older than 65.

For this reason, research has focused mostly on middle-aged and older people. But a recent study tells us that this has been a mistake.

Obesity early in life is a predictor of cancer

Dr. Eric Jacobs suspected that we should be looking more at weight and obesity in younger people as a predictor of pancreatic cancer later in life.

Jacobs is the senior scientific director of Epidemiology Research at the American Cancer Society in Atlanta. He puzzled over the fact that, while pancreatic cancer rates are increasing, and while obesity is a known risk factor, the two don’t seem to jive.

“Increased weight in the U.S. population is a likely suspect, but previous studies have indicated that excess weight is linked with only a relatively small increase in risk, which doesn’t look large enough to fully explain recent increases in pancreatic cancer rates.”

Related: Don’t trade high blood pressure for pancreatic cancer

Until now, most studies have looked at weight and obesity in older adults. But by looking at data from almost a million people who were part of an American Cancer Society study, Jacobs saw a different picture.

He estimated that 29 percent of pancreatic cancer deaths in people born between 1970 and 1974 were attributable to weight, as opposed to only 15 percent of deaths in people born in the 1930s.

The takeaway: we need to fight obesity earlier in life, in young adulthood and middle age before 50, to prevent pancreatic cancer from killing us when we are older.

Not just pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer isn’t the only cancer associated with being overweight.

According to the National Cancer Institute, there is “consistent evidence” that excess body fat is associated with:

• Endometrial cancer
• Esophageal adenocarcinoma (the most common form of esophageal cancer)
• Gastric cardia cancer (occurs in the upper part of the stomach, near the esophagus
• Liver cancer
• Kidney cancer
• Multiple myelomas (cancer of the bone marrow)
• Meningioma (a slow-growing tumor on the lining surrounding the brain)
• Colorectal cancer
• Gall bladder cancer
• Breast cancer
• Ovarian cancer
• Thyroid cancer

Think about how many lives could be saved simply by controlling obesity early in life.

How to prevent obesity

Many of the following ways to prevent obesity may seem like things you’ve heard a million times before. But clearly, they need to be heard again.

If you are trying to avoid becoming overweight:

• Fruits and veggies. Five to six servings a day.
• Eat more of the black nut that fights obesity.
• Go whole grain. Choose whole grain bread and brown rice over anything white or processed.
• Avoid “energy dense” foods. In other words, foods that have a lot of calories in a small amount of food with little nutritional value. Instead of a cheeseburger and fries, go for a chicken sandwich and a salad.
• Daily exercise. Moderate-intensity exercise, such as walking a 15-minute mile, doing housework or weeding your garden, burn calories.

Related: The three switches that turn on cancer, and how to flip them back off

If you are trying to lose weight:

• Weigh and measure food. If you’re fighting a serious battle with obesity, it helps to get a sense of what appropriate portion sizes look like. For example, a 3-ounce serving of meat is about the size of a deck of cards.
• Burn some calories. Eating more calories than you burn day after day will always lead to weight gain.

If you are seriously overweight, it is always a good idea to work with your doctor in developing a weight loss plan.

Sources:

1. Excess Body Weight Before age 50 is Associated With Higher Risk of Dying From Pancreatic Cancer — American Association for Cancer Research
2. Obesity and Cancer — National Cancer Institute
3. Obesity Prevention — Stanford Health Care